Tag: youtube

100th video up

Just six months ago, I started a YouTube channel, What is cybersecurity?, to provide short videos (most are under 4 minutes and all are currently well under 10 minutes) discussing topics and issues in cybersecurity. I’ve spent 25+ years in the field (well before anyone called it “cybersecurity”) and had been wondering how people get into it these days. In particular, I’m aware that not everyone processes information in the same way, and that for many people, short video content is there preferred way of gaining new knowledge. So I decided that this was what I’d do: create short videos, publish frequently and see how it went.

Today, the 100th video was published: What is data privacy?

To celebrate this, here’s a post describing various aspects of the process.

Methodology

I thought it might be interesting to people to understand how I’ve gone about choosing the topics for videos. When I decided to do this, I created a long list of topics (the initial list was over 150) and realised very early on that I was going to have to start with simple issues and build up to more complicated ones if I wanted to be able to address sophisticated concepts. This meant that I’ve started off with some of the basic building blocks in computing which aren’t specifically security-related, just because I wanted to be able to provide basic starting points for people coming to the field.

I was slightly concerned when I started that I’d run out of ideas for topics: this hasn’t been a problem, and I don’t expect it to be any time in the future. Currently, with 100 videos published, I have over 250 topics that I want to cover (which I haven’t recorded yet). Whenever I come across a topic or concept, I add it to the list. There are few books that I mine for ideas, of which the most notable are:

  • Trust in Computer Systems and the Cloud – Mike Bursell (my book!)
  • Security Enginineering (3rd edition) – Ross Anderson
  • CISSP Exam Guide (9th edition) – Fernando Maymi, Shon Harris

As mentioned above, the videos are all short, and, so far, they’re all single-takes, in that each is a single recording, without editing pieces together. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have to re-record quite frequently – I’d say, on average, that 50% of videos require two or more takes to get right.

Audience

Who do I expect to be my audience? These are the personae that I’ve targeted to start with:

  • undergraduates reading Computer Science or similar, with an interest in cybersecurity
  • masters students looking to move into cybersecurity
  • computing professionals wanting more information on specific cybersecurity topics
  • managers or professionals in non-computing roles looking for a definition or explanation of a particular term
  • (after looking at UK students) A level students in Computer Science

Playlists

YouTube encourages you to create playlists to help people find related topics on your channel. These are the playlists that I currently have (I expect to create more as I get into more complex topics):

Cybersecurity concepts compared takes two or more topics and draws out the differences (and similarities). There are so many complex topics in cybersecurity which are really close to each other and it’s not always easy to differentiate them.

Equipment and software

Here’s the equipment and software I’m using.

Equipment

System: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor, 32GB RAM

Camera: Razer Kiyo Pro (though currently I’m trying out a Sony ZV-E10, which provides lovely video, but requires a 175ms audio delay due to USB streaming processing performance)

Microphone: audio-technica AT2035

Pre-amp: Art Tube MP-Studio V3

Software

Operating system: Fedora 39 Workstation

Studio: OBS Studio

Transcription: Buzz

Audio stripping: ffmpeg and some very light bash scripting

Thumbnails: Canva

Most watched? “Encapsulation”

” Thank you, I have a test tomorrow and you helped clear things up!”

As I mentioned in my last article on this blog, I’ve started a YouTube channel called “What is cybersecurity?” aimed at people wanting to get into cybersecurity or looking to understand particular topics for professional reasons (or personal interest). So far, the most popular video is “What is encapsulation?“. I was delighted to get a comment on it from a new subscriber saying “Thank you, I have a test tomorrow and you helped clear things up!”. This is exactly the sort of use to which I’ve been hoping people will put my channel videos.

Since I launched the channel, I’ve been busy recording lots of content, applying some branding (including thumbnails, which make a huge difference to how professional the content looks), scheduling videos and trying to get my head around the analytics available.

I have to say that I’m really enjoying it, and I’m going to try to keep around a month’s content ready to go in case I’m unable to record things for a while. In order to get a decent amount of content up and provide an underlying set of information, I’m aiming for around 3 videos a week for now, though that will probably reduce over time.

For now, I’m concentrating on basic topics around cybersecurity, partly because every time I’m tempted to record something more complex, I realise how many more basic concepts it’s going to rely on. For example, if I want to record something on the CIA triad, then being able to refer to existing content on confidentiality, integrity and availability makes a lot of sense, given that they’re building blocks which it’s helpful to understand before getting your head around what the triad really represents and describes.

As well as single topic videos, I’m creating “What’s the difference…?” videos comparing two or three similar or related topics. There are so many topics that I remember being confused about, or still am, and have to look up to remind myself. I try to define the topics in separate videos first and then use the “What’s the difference…” video as a comparison – then people can refer to the stand-alone topic videos to get the specifics if they need them.

So, it’s early days, but I’m enjoying it. If you are interested in this topic or if you know people who might be, please do share the channel with them: it’s https://youtube.com/@trustauthor. Oh, and subscribe! I also want suggestions for topics: please let me know what questions or issues you think I should be covering.

My Youtube channel: “What is cybersecurity?”

TL;DR: subscribe to my channel What is cybersecurity?

I’ve been a little quiet here recently, and that’s a result of a number of events coinciding, including a fair amount of travel (hello Bilbao, hello Shanghai!), but also a decision I made recently to create a YouTube channel. “Are there not enough YouTube channels already?” you might reasonably ask. Well yes, there are lots of them, but I’ve become increasingly aware that there don’t seem to be any which provide short, easy-to-understand videos covering the basics of cybersecurity. I’m a big proponent of encouraging more people into cybersecurity, and that means that there need to be easily-found materials that beginners and those interested in the field can consume, and where they can ask for more information about topics that they don’t yet understand. And that’s what seems to be missing.

There are so many different concepts to get your head around in cybersecurity, and although I’ve been running this blog for quite a while, many of the articles I write are aimed more at existing practitioners in the field. More important than that, I’m aware that there’s a huge potential audience out there of people who prefer to consume content in video format. And, as any of you who have actually met me in real life, or seen me speak at conferences, I enjoy talking (!) and explaining things to people.

So my hopes are three-fold:

  1. that even if the channel’s current content is a little basic for you now, as I add more videos, you’ll find material that’s useful and interesting to you;
  2. that you’ll ask questions for me to answer – even if I don’t post a response immediately, I’ll try to get to your topic when it’s appropriate;
  3. that you’ll share the channel widely with those you work with: we need to encourage more people to get involved in cybersecurity.

So, please subscribe, watch and share: What is cybersecurity? And I’ll try to keep interesting and useful content coming.